Are The James Brand's Pocket Knives Worth Buying?
Everyone has their YouTube rabbit hole. My buddy watches an old ship being rebuilt. He’s never sailed a day in his 35 years on this planet, but there's a good chance he was a salt-scrubbed sea captain in a previous life. I like to watch people shake out their pockets and show what they carry on a day-to-day basis. It reveals a little bit of their soul.
Sure, it's a little grand and a little elder-millennial-capitalist to assume that everything we own reveals some deep facet of our beings. Sometimes a pen is just a pen. But it is true that everything in our pockets represents a choice, conscious or unconscious, about how we will live that day. Esquire is all about eulogizing the products we buy, be they Montblanc pens or cheap ballpoint pens. There’s a reason we wrote an entire Esquire-approved guide to EDC. The things we carry are deeply interesting, even if sometimes they’re not that deep.
The James Brand is one such brand I'm fascinated with. It was started in 2012 on the founding principles that design matters, especially in the EDC world. I started seeing its knives take over my YouTube world around five or so years ago, which makes me late to the party. But it seemed, suddenly, like everyone in the knife world was obsessing over this brand. I have a knee-jerk reaction against the overhyped and chalked the praise up to a savvy marketing plan and a well-invested influencer budget. Nothing to scoff at, but nothing to prove the mettle of the gear.
The James Brand Amazon Storefront
Eventually, though, curiosity won me over. I had to try a knife. I ordered the Carter in the Coyote Tan + Black colorway and expected to feel so-so about it. In the $150 price range you’re going to get a good knife, regardless of brand. The question was more, how good could this knife even be?
As it turns out, I was wrong. The Carter is a very, very good knife. It has a combination of features basically required in this price range of knives: a VG-10 stainless steel blade, a reversible pocket clip, a locking mechanism, a thumb-disk for stability, and the option between different materials for the scales. I could go on, but you could just as well find that on the product page. What sets it apart is not the specs on paper, but rather, how it feels in the hand. Which is spectacular.
This is hard to write about because it feels very woo-woo in a product review that should be tactical, straightforward, logical. But the Carter (and other knives from James Brand) just feel right. Sword in the stone, Excalibur as the blade of King Arthur, right. I have an unhealthy amount of knives. Like sunglasses and denim shirts, it’s one of my special interests that I justify over-owning under the guise of maintaining a professional archive. And I go through seasons of swapping my daily carry out for new styles. Yet the Carter, like a lucky penny, continues to rise to the top. I’ve packed it for fly-fishing trips to North Carolina, used it to spread tinned fish on crackers while on a 28-foot sailboat on Lake Michigan, and to open an endless stream of cardboard boxes. It shines on every usage occasion.
I’ve since had the chance to try a wide range of knives and other products from the brand. I’ve upgraded from the Carter to the brand’s titanium Chapter 2, which is the 2.0 version of the knife the brand launched with. Mine is in Damascus steel and as fun to look at as it is to use. Though I wouldn’t recommend spending $650 on a knife, if you’re going to, you should do it on the brand’s top-of-the-line Barnes, which is (other than the blade) machined from one solid piece of titanium and is akin to an abstract, wildly functional, modern art sculpture. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the lively and colorful Redstone which is a fun, functional knife that doesn’t take itself too seriously. For my son’s upcoming fifth birthday, he’s getting a wooden knife kit from the brand. Something to stash in his hiking gear with his kid’s tackle box and binoculars as a way to start recreating in the wild and learning how to take care of his stuff.
Pocket knives, like wallets and watches, are a curiously personal choice. James is not alone in the space. I will always sing the praises of Opinel, Esquire editor Luke Guillory is dedicated to his Case Trapper for personal reasons, and you can never go wrong with a Leatherman (which consequently just launched a line of non-multi-tool knives for the first time in brand history). There are more hardcore knife nerds than me, who obsess over things like steel and weight, and scales. But even they’d have to agree that all those tangibles, added together, create that intangible thing I'm talking about. The James Brand is the master of the tangible made intangible. It’s the reason the knives have such a cult following.
The only thing the brand hasn't been able to convince me on is the Palmer knife, the brand’s most affordable offering, a $30 take on the classic utility razor. Not to say it’s a bad knife, but c’mon, you can’t beat a $3 Harbor Freight boxcutter. But if it's a real-deal knife you're searching for, I'd put The James Brand lineup against any other brand-new knife you can find.
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